The Makeover

27

"Every friend is a new adventure... the start of more memories."

Patrick Lindsay

27|His name is "Steve"

Jake had been tutoring me for almost three days now and I had already started to understand the concept of eleventh-grade maths.

Every afternoon, Jake came over to my house and tutored me for about two hours. He left around the time that my parents usually got home.

Everyone in the house knew Jake by now and thankfully, Kayla no longer called him "lame". She actually found Jake to be quite a "cool guy" and loved spending time with us whenever we were at the house.

She'd just sit quietly in my room using my laptop so that she could be in both of our presence.

But on a fine Thursday morning, I had a problem.

Jake wouldn't be able to tutor me over at my house because, at the last minute, my parents had informed me that they were having some kind of fancy dinner with their colleagues. I'd sucked it up and just said I'd ask Jake if we could go to his house for the day.

I still had to be home by six to get ready for the dinner at eight. My parents didn't see it as proper to exclude their children from their dinner plans.

Mom made up a dozen excuses about how she didn't want us to starve or be kept up in our rooms all night, but I knew the real reason. She took every single possibility she had to show us off to anyone.

She always beamed about Joshua's amazing athletic skills, Kayla's excellent piano performances, Annie's deep love for poetry, Kayleigh's record-breaking cheerleading achievements and my great academic results.

Yes, she used a whole lot of adjectives while bragging about us to show her amount of pride in us.

Even though most of the time everyone who worked beside her was fooled, all of her children didn't believe her one bit.

We knew that she only acted in front of crowds to show them that she had a perfect family. Our family wasn't perfect. In fact, we were quite screwed up. I mean, I was about ninety-seven percent sure that Joshua brought girls home at least three times a week when mom and dad weren't there.

Mom was a fake, no matter how harsh that sounded coming from her daughter. I would know best. Once, she told some of her friends that I was such a social butterfly and was always bringing friends over even though I barely used my cell phone because I barely had any contacts on it.

So, honestly I didn't want to go to this dinner, but I had no choice. Mom usually threatened me somehow and this time she said that if I didn't show up to the dinner, she would take away my laptop for a month.

I wasn't willing to take that risk.

"Hey, Katie," I heard Annastacia's voice echo through the hallway. "Lunch with us today?" She questioned me as I walked towards my maths class.

I walked on without sparing her glance. "No thanks."

I heard Annastacia growl under breath. "No problem. Come hang with us if you want."

"Yeah right." I scoffed and walked on.

"OUCH!" I heard someone yell. I turned around, alarmed to see Brittney throwing a hissy fit. "Why'd you push me? My arm like totally hurts now." She complained, directing her words at Annastacia.

Annastacia seemed uncomfortable since an entire hallway of people were now focused on her, but I bet that she secretly enjoyed the attention. "Would you chill? You're making a scene." She attempted to whisper-shout, but I was sure that everyone in the hallway could hear her.